Attempted Cooperation and Foreseeable Disasters
by Everything's Eventual
Summary: The guardians make their beloved boss a birthday cake and the results are a somewhat predictable sum of their combined stupidity. Upper K for Mukuro's existence and the guardian's inability to work together without Tsuna's presence. Happy Birthday Tsuna! 10/14


**I finally finished, happy birthday Tsuna!**

* * *

The day itself was normal. The sky was blue like always, the sun beaming from the center through the crisp, cool air that shared the sky with lonely clouds that drifted lazily across the blue along with a hint of mist that smirked up at the heavens from the lowest crevasses of the earth and the promise of rain smiled from where fall storms loomed on the horizon and thunder rumbled carelessly and distantly.

It was a nice October day, the trees died with dignity; their dramatic deaths marked with the blooming of orange and red leaves that some might say were even prettier than their green counter parts. The grass browned and crisp wind sang solemn songs to the farewell of summer and the greeting of fall.

People milled about in the towns single market, lazy with the fact that there were no upcoming holidays and they would have to tough out work of school until November, bought little and talked a lot. Warm foods and drinks were sold with renewed vigor after a hot summer of popsicles and lemon aid, hot tea and cakes were making a comeback.

The modern houses were lined up along the street and all looked exactly the same, in appearance and in the way they greeted the season in the same deadpan way they greeted every season. It was a quiet, Sunday afternoon where everyone was either inside or inside a mall or a library and no small children made noise in the street. The only noise on the street, aside from the subtle howl of the wind, was a large group of boys gathered in front of a house, marked 'Sasagawa', all talking amongst each other but not yelling too loud because they weren't sure if the brother or the sister would answer the door.

It was the sister, a pretty, petit girl with a constant smile that reminded them all of the reason they had come to her house.

Cake.

She smiled and let them all in, a minute later leaving herself, off to get her own friend and pick up a certain boy who was sitting at home, playing video games with a small, Chinese child on his lap wondering where his friends could be on such a chilly day and if they had forgotten his birthday.

A fact that couldn't be farther from the truth, his friends and even someone he still considered somewhat of an enemy had gathered together to celebrate their beloved friend's birthday in the only way they knew how. Food.

The kitchen was quiet, the boys had sent the loudest member along with the most soft spoken to get ingredients from the local store so they all stood around with nothing to say or any idea on how to continue.

"Haha… how do we go about doing this?" a tall, brawny teen beamed cheerfully, if not a little confused, at the array of cups, measuring spoons, and bowls the orange haired girl had collected and set out rather gracefully around the Sasagawa kitchen for them before leaving with a cheery wave.

The shorter teen next to him nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose, not taking his face out of the cookbook, "Uh, there's flour involved…"

A little boy with a mop of curly black hair, perched on a chair, piped up, "My, my… whose going to dig up the flower?"

"Wait for Turf head to get back, baseball idiot! Not a flower, flour! You stupid cow!" the teen with the glasses twitched and hissed like an angry cat, trying to yell at two people at the same time was a chore even for him.

The boy let out a cry of indignity, "Don't call my stupid, Stupid'era!" A large, thick glass bowl was hurled across the room at the offending man by a tiny ten year-old, only to be caught rather expertly by a purple haired man on the other side of the kitchen, who sighed exasperatedly.

"You lot are _useless_," he scowled, setting down the bowl with a clink, and thinking that, being the oldest, he should be the one to spearhead this movement, "Gokudera," the teen looked up, still brisling, "You stay away from the ingredients. I don't want your genes messing with the Vongola's cake."

All Gokudera could say to that was, "At least I wouldn't poison it, why are _you_ even here, Rokudo?!"

The question was obviously rhetorical because Yamamoto had already found, and confiscated, the mass amounts of aphrodisiac in the bag the illusionist brought, so Mukuro continued on instructing them, ignoring Gokudera entirely, "Regardless," he continued, "Yamamoto, Shimon, and… the cow," both Yamamoto and Lambo looked towards him with equal amounts of cheer and suspicion, while Enma simply nodded to show compliance, "You two can handle the baking aspect, yes?"

"Way better then Stupid'era could!" Lambo was quick to claim.

Before Gokudera could jump down the cow-boy's throat, Yamamoto was quicker to pacify, "Now now!" He laughed, "Lambo's just a kid! Come'on, kiddo," he said, turning to the mess of curly hair and lifting him up off the seat with no visible effort and onto the floor, "Let's get the stuff ready for when Sasagawa and Basil come back with the ingredients!" with something to do, Lambo jumped up and began collecting all he could reach off the counter with Enma joining to help.

"I'll supervise," no one argued, considering none of them trusted the freaky eye'd teen near the food, "And Sasagawa will help Gokudera and Basilcum can clean up…" Mukuro examined the people in the room; all seemed to be immersed in their duties except one, a lone little prince of a boy sitting stiffly in a chair he'd dragged to the very edge of the small, busy room.

Light eyes stared intently at Mukuro like the boy sitting alone expected nothing other than for the purple haired man to pounce on him, the boy expressing nothing but pure, smothering terror. It seemed four years wasn't long enough for the memories of anxiety and panic to remove themselves from behind the little prince's eyes.

Mukuro had the dignity to look somewhat ashamed and lowered his voice to a soft whisper, which the room itself, with all the beeping of timers and clinking of utensils, seemed to lower its volume to hear, "Fuuta-" when the boy's eyes dilated and his body twitched fearfully, Mukuro flinched as well, and for once, he felt smothered by a guilt that usually only Tsunayoshi was able to bring out, "…Why don't you help Yamamoto?"

"Yes, Rokudo." Fuuta's voice unnaturally high and cracking, he fled to Yamamoto's side (who knew enough to put an arm around him and look strong and protective), "Takeshi-nii…" he squeaked, still fearful and still staring at Mukuro.

That bout of seriousness was enough to give everyone a nervous pause.

Weirdly enough, it was Enma who broke the silence; the red head took a large bowl out of Lambo's hands while he was relocating it from the counter to the table and dropped it. Simply lifted the bowl into the air and marked the first of many broken bowls that smash themselves into the floor. And, as a gut reaction the sound something shattering, the entire room froze and looked over, the awkward silence freezing and crashing with the bowl.

Enma remained deadpan while he drew Fuuta away from Mukuro and towards the shards scattered about the kitchen, he put his hand on the small boy's shoulders and maneuvered him away and onto his knees next to himself, "Fuuta, help me pick this up." He instructed strictly and Fuuta smiled on impulse.

"Okay, Enma-nii!" he said, "It's okay that you dropped it, you know, because you and Tsuna-nii are really clumsy!" Fuuta laughed and Enma scratched the back of his head and smiled shyly through his blush.

"I suppose."

* * *

After that odd sort of incident, everything started moving at a different pace in an almost different direction, Mukuro drifted and blended into the back wall, relinquishing his leadership to the second in command of the Vongola who seemed to take this baking exercise as a dramatic test designed to test his mettle as Tsuna's right hand man and was drilling everyone on cake making procedures even before Ryohei and Basil got back and turning this whole baking idea into a militaristic adventure.

Everything was going smoothly; the bowls and such set up, Fuuta relaxed even with Mukuro's presence, Gokudera and Enma were discussing how long to time the oven in Italian, and Lambo had occupied himself with reading and memorizing all the recipes for cookies in the cook book Gokudera had been using, until an EXTREAM burst of sound resounded through the house, "WE ARE BACK!"

Another soft voice announced its existence as well.

Ryohei's storming into his own kitchen sparked Gokudera's professionalism flying out the window and a match of screaming profanities occurred instantly. Lambo's ears were quickly covered by Fuuta's tiny hands while Fuuta's ears were covered by Yamamoto's hands as rapid fire insults were hurled across the kitchen.

"Haha… somebody should separate them."

"Master Gokudera, Master Sasagawa- owch!" a misplaced punch connected with Basil's head, who was not the person who should have tried getting in the middle of the escalating shouting match. Yamamoto quickly saved the day by doing something stupid and attracting Gokudera's ire more than Ryohei while the rest quickly put the two to work before they could do anything else that would start a war. Everyone was put at a station and holding some utensil or food idem and made too busy to argue.

Now, the actual baking aspect went a little something like this…

Three eggs in Gokudera's hair. Five on the ground at Lambo's feet. One in the bowl.

A gallon of milk on the floor. A cup of the spare spare in the mixing bowl.

One forth cup of cooking oil in the mixing bowl with the milk. A cup sprayed at Yamamoto.

Three cups of sugar in the bowl. Six being digested by Lambo.

A half bag of flour mixed in with the sugar. The rest… everywhere else.

A dab of frosting on Mukuro's face. The rest poured over Ryohei's head. Another bowl being mixed.

The bar of cook chocolate consumed, then regurgitated into the upstairs toliet. The cake is now vanilla.

By the end of it, the kitchen looked more like a cake then their cake would have.

They didn't even bother putting the cake in the oven, mostly because they could see something bubbling in the bowl and the large, white egg shells floating along the top like tiny ships lost in a gooey, pink (Pink? How did it turn pink?!) sea of uncooked deliciousness.

Gokudera fell to his knees, more horrified that he had messed up his favorite person in the world's birthday cake then the fact that he may have inherited his sister's God forsaken cooking skills.

Mukuro played his own off his own disappointment at the crushed plan of entering the Vongola's house flamboyantly with a cake with a smack of his hand to his forehead and an exasperated sigh.

Yamamoto just frowned, furrowing his eyebrows and wondering how he could fix this problem of none of them being able to cook.

Lambo was smiling, not nearly adept enough at reading the atmosphere to realize that their cause was hopeless. The only thing on his mind was whether or not they were going to let him lick the bowl.

And Ryohei's mind was moving along a similar track as Lambo's.

"I failed Decimo!" Gokudera wailed, collectively expressing the group's general dismal attitude. He let out a shuddering sob and disturbed the flour making huge, poufy clouds of the stuff float about the room. An egg white dripped from his hair and plopped onto the floor.

Lambo started licking the frosting and sugar off the table.

Mukuro started brushing himself off, taking his own failure out on the flour clinging to his clothes.

Their depressing pity party was cut short, however, by a soft voice announcing that the cake was done followed by a high pitched 'bing' from one of the timers.

They all turned, wide eyed, to see little Fuuta, arms almost entirely covered by overly large oven mitts, remove a beautiful, marble cake from the oven and hand it to Basil who was ready, smiling brilliantly, with orange icing.

Their collective jaws dropped.

It was Enma who choose to explain this lucky inconsistency, he stared at them blankly, fighting a small smile trying to tug at his lips because this hopeless crowd reminded him of his own guardians, "Fuuta, Basil and I made it because we knew you lot would screw it up."

There was a collective laugh, then droop, because it was pathetic at how right he was. The guardians were collectively banished from touching the cake until they got it to their birthday boy.

Hibari was laughing on the roof.

* * *

_"Buon Compleanno, Decimo!"_


End file.
